


Ascendio

by SuburbanSun



Category: Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hogwarts, F/M, Getting Back Together, Hogwarts Professors, Second Chances
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-17 22:34:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,870
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13086816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuburbanSun/pseuds/SuburbanSun
Summary: Rebecca is thrilled about a new year of teaching at Hogwarts-- until she finds out that Greg Serrano is the new Potions professor. Will working with her old flame cause new problems?





	Ascendio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mierke](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mierke/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide!
> 
> Thanks to ardentaislinn for the cheerleading!

“Oh my god, they’re so adorable this year, aren’t they, Paula?” Rebecca speared a roasted potato and chewed as she surveyed the first-years lining up in the back of the Great Hall. “Were they always that tiny? I don’t remember them always being so tiny.”

Beside her, Paula sighed. “Kids always seem cute, ‘til you walk in on one of them practicing a little self-magic with their wand, if you know what I mean, over summer break.” She grimaced over at her son, a fifth-year laughing at the Hufflepuff table. “I can barely look Tommy in the face.” 

Rebecca snorted a laugh, still eagerly taking in the excitement that always accompanied the first feast of the term. “No wonder you were so thrilled to come back.” 

“I’m just saying, I love my kids, but it’s a lot easier to love them when they’re Professor Whitefeather’s responsibility.”

“Hey-- speaking of-- why’s there an empty seat by Darryl?”

Paula shrugged. “New Potions professor, I guess. Last I heard, Professor Martinez was still laid up in St. Mungo’s with Dragon Pox. Poor guy.”

“Yikes.”

They resumed eating, and Rebecca forgot all about the empty seat throughout the Headmaster’s announcements, the Sorting of the first-years, and two helpings of pudding. Finally, just as the students were being shuffled off to their common rooms for the night, she heard a familiar voice from the other end of the staff table.

“Sorry I’m late, Headmaster.” 

Rebecca’s head shot up. Her eyes met his, just as the Headmaster shook his hand and turned to introduce him to the table. 

“Everyone, this is our new Potions professor. Professor Gregory Serrano.”

 

 

 

“Cookie? You gonna be okay?”

Part of Rebecca had wanted to duck down behind the massive oak table when she’d locked eyes with Greg, but instead she’d simply excused herself and stepped outside for a bit of fresh air. She pulled her robes tighter around her against the September chill.

“What? I’m fine. Why wouldn’t I be fine?”

Paula sidled up beside her, and they both looked out on the lake. The giant squid splashed merrily in the dim light. “Because the last time you saw Greg was--” 

“The end of seventh year.”

“--when he called your relationship a--”

“--shitshow. I know. I mean, to be fair, he meant it in a loving way. And also to be fair, he was kinda right.”

“Uh huh.” Paula reached out to rub Rebecca’s back reassuringly. “But it’s still weird, right?”

Rebecca sighed, then turned to face Paula. “I just didn’t expect to see him again is all. I mean, we sent each other owls on occasion, you know. For awhile. But then we just sort of lost touch.”

“Come on. Let’s get inside. I’ve got a box of Muggle doughnut holes and a bottle of elderflower wine with our name on it.”

 

 

 

It wasn’t that Rebecca wasn’t happy to see Greg. She was just unsettled by the sight of him. They’d dated during their seventh year-- both before and after she’d dated his best friend Josh. They hadn’t been healthy for each other and they’d both known it.

That didn’t mean it hadn’t been hard to let go. 

After splitting a bottle of wine with Paula, Rebecca laid in bed for hours staring up into the canopy. It was only as the first hint of dawn crept through her window that she made a decision. 

She sat up in bed with a start, jostling the covers. 

“I’m totally going to get Greg back.”

 

 

 

The first step, she decided, was to reintroduce herself, so she plopped down in the seat beside him at breakfast.

“Hi, Greg.” 

His eyes widened, and he looked hesitant, but the corners of his mouth crept up anyway. “Rebecca. Hi.”

She took a sip of pumpkin juice for something to do with her hands. “So. What’s new with you?” Her voice sounded high-pitched to her own ears. Why was she so nervous? It was just _Greg_.

“Um. In the last… ten years? Oh, you know, not much. I got a new tie?” he suggested, smoothing the green and silver fabric with one hand. He looked almost amused, and that kind of made her mad.

“What brings you to Hogwarts?”

He chuckled. “Well, there’s a particular professor with a nasty case of Dragon Pox…”

“Ugh, Greg, I don’t care about Professor Martinez.”

“That’s harsh.” 

She cocked her head to the side and pinned him with a glare. “What are you doing here?”

Greg fiddled with the napkin in his lap. “I applied, and the headmaster sent me an owl saying I had the job. And here I am.”

“Greg, come on.” She know she was needling him rather than flirting like she’d planned, but she was just so curious.

He scoffed and shrugged, like she was pulling the answer out of him and he didn’t want to let go of it. “I don’t know, Rebecca. I guess this is kind of the job I’ve been working for since I left here. Kind of. Sort of. I don’t know. It’s not important. Do you want a roll?” He reached for the tray of bread in front of them and held one out to her. 

She took the roll, but didn’t take a bite. “Wow. That’s-- well, you were always really good at potions.”

One corner of his mouth quirked up. “Thanks.”

Rebecca was about to say something else-- something flirtier, she hoped, something enticing or intriguing-- but then Professor Whitefeather sat down on the other side of Greg and once you got Darryl talking, there was no going back. Meanwhile, Rebecca could barely function in the morning until she’d had her pumpkin juice.

She listened to Darryl and Greg’s conversation, interjecting when it made sense, but her opportunity to talk to Greg alone was gone.

 

 

 

She clearly wasn’t going to win Greg over with conversation, so the next day, she decided to try the nuclear option. She waited until his free period, and then snuck into his classroom. He’d retreated into the storage room to put away some equipment, and as soon as he turned around, she leapt at him, backing him up against the shelves and crashing her lips against his.

His arms flew to her waist, but instead of kissing her back, he pushed her back down, a look of confusion on his face.

“Hi, Greg,” she said, in what she hoped was her most seductive voice, and slid her hands around his neck. He reached up and unwound them, squeezing her palms before letting her go.

“Rebecca, what are you trying to do?”

She huffed, then stomped her foot, just a little. “What do you think I’m trying to do?”

He raised an eyebrow. “I think you’re trying to feel me up in the potions store room."

“You didn’t seem to have a problem with it ten years ago.” 

“Ten years ago, I was an idiot.” When Rebecca glared at him, he held up both hands. “No, I don’t mean-- not for-- I wasn’t an idiot for being with you. I was just an idiot. I was a seventeen-year-old boy.”

Rebecca crossed her arms, leaning back against the cabinet that held the dry ingredients for potions. “Okay… Maybe, possibly, I was kind of an idiot at seventeen, too.”

He chuckled. “Maybe. But the point is, you’re not an idiot now.”

“Obviously,” she scoffed. “I was the youngest Charms professor to ever be hired on at Hogwarts. I’m next in line to be head of Ravenclaw House.”

“Exactly. We’re not the same people we were ten years ago.” 

She regarded him with suspicion for a moment. He sounded wise. When had Greg gotten wise? She asked him as much, and he laughed.

“Somewhere between coasting for way too many years after graduating, practically poisoning myself with firewhiskey, and finally going back to study under the potions master at Emory.” He puffed out his chest almost imperceptibly, almost like he didn’t even realize he was doing it. “I don’t know if you know this, but in the U.S., they call Emory the Hogwarts of the South.”

Rebecca wrinkled her nose. “I thought Vanderbilt was the Hogwarts of the South.”

Greg waved her off. “Never mind. Just-- there’s so much you don’t know about me, and I don’t know anything about you except that you’re clearly still brilliant, and headstrong, and look really good in a pair of robes.”

“So what are you saying?” 

He shrugged. “I don’t know… that maybe it’s high time we got to know each other as adults.”

She took a breath, about to argue, but then sighed. “Okay, yeah. You’re right. When you’re right, you’re right. Man, what kind of lessons do they teach you at the Hogwarts of the South?”

“You joke, but it’s a really good school.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

He gestured for the door to the storage closet, and she nodded, slipping out into the classroom. He followed her.

“Maybe we could start with a tour?” Greg suggested. “The staircases have changed a lot in the last ten years. I’ve gotten lost at least six times.”

Rebecca felt a mix of residual adrenaline and embarrassment from the events of the last ten minutes, but took a deep breath through her nose and tried to ignore it. Greg was right-- and there was no time like the present to begin. “I can do that.” He smiled, and after straightening a few things on his desk, they headed for the corridor.

“Greg?” 

“Yeah?”

“Let’s forget I tried to jump your bones in the store room on your second day.”

“Consider it forgotten.”

 

 

 

Surprisingly for someone with an eidetic memory and an uncanny ability to replay old anxieties over and over in her brain even without a Pensieve, Rebecca was able to forget about it, too. For the most part, at least. By the middle of the term, she and Greg had formed a tentative friendship.

“Do you want to meet up in the staff lounge later? I’m grading papers and could use reinforcements,” Paula said as she and Rebecca strode out of the Great Hall after breakfast one day. “They’re riddled with misspellings and logical fallacies,” she added. “Your favorite to correct!”

“Oh, I can’t,” Rebecca said. “Greg wants my help with charming some cabinets in his classroom that won’t stay shut.”

Paula stopped in her tracks just as Rebecca started up a staircase; by the time she’d realized it, the staircase had rotated 45 degrees. Rebecca huffed at Paula from several feet away. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“Paula.” The staircase rotated again, another 45 degrees clockwise, and Rebecca spun in her spot to continue to face her friend. “I know you want to say something, so out with it.”

“I’m not saying a word.”

“Paula!”

Paula glanced around pointedly at the students making their way to or from class on the adjacent staircases, and Rebecca sighed. “ _Muffliato_ ,” she mumbled quickly with a whip of her wand, ensuring that no one nearby could listen in. “Now tell me what you’re implying.”

Paula sighed. “Isn’t it obvious? _Greg likes you_.”

Rebecca scrunched up her nose, rearing back in disbelief. “What? No. What? No way.”

“I’m afraid so, Cookie.” Paula threw up her hands as the staircase finally came back around and she could join Rebecca on their route. “I mean, I’m sorry-- _his cabinets won’t close, and he needs you to come charm them shut_? What is that, straight out of some kind of wizard porno?”

“Paula!” Rebecca’s voice was pitched high, and she looked around to make sure no students had heard them.

“Relax, _muffliato_ , remember? Anyway, I don’t know why you’re so in denial. You like Greg, Greg likes you, you guys have been making up excuses to spend time together since September. Go make little Slytherclaw babies together.” Paula grimaced. “Just spare me the details.”  

Rebecca sucked in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. She and Greg had just been hanging out, as friends, finding out where they fit in each other’s lives. That was all. Right?

She intended to ask Paula how she could accuse her of such a thing, but what came out was a quiet, “Do you think it could work this time?” They’d reached Rebecca’s Charms classroom, and she stopped in front of the doorway. 

Paula clucked her tongue and put both hands on Rebecca’s shoulders. “Oh, honey.” 

“Yeah?”

She looked sympathetically at Rebecca. “You know I don’t like Greg. Never have. Not since you told me about the time you dated, not since he started working here and kept occupying so much of your time.”

Rebecca pouted. “Yeah.” 

With a sigh, Paula let her hands drop to her sides. “But yeah. I think maybe it could.”

 

 

 

Later that day, Rebecca walked into Greg’s Potions classroom with a belly full of nerves. What did she have to be nervous about? It was _Greg_.

“Are you decent in here?” she called out with a chuckle as she slipped into the room. He quirked an eyebrow from where he sat behind his desk.

“Uh, yeah, Rebecca, I’m fully clothed inside my own classroom, where my students could come through the door at a moment’s notice.”

She held up both hands in front of her. “Hey, you never know. Professor Martinez used to get into some weird stuff. Where do you think he got that Dragon Pox from?”

Greg laughed, then stood up and walked around from behind the desk. “So, I’ll show you where the offending cabinets are. Hope you brought your A-game, Bunch, because it’s like they’re hexed or something.” He stepped into the store room, and she followed right behind him, almost crashing into his back when he stopped. He pointed at an antique armoire. “That’s the one.”

Rebecca pulled out her wand and stepped around Greg to get a closer look at the armoire. “And just so we’re clear, you want it to breathe fire, sprout legs, and scare your students into submission, correct?”

“All that is fine by me, as long as it shuts. My lacewing flies keep flying out.”

She raised her wand hand, then let it drop, turning to face him. He was closer than she’d expected, just a foot or so away, and she opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. Greg looked at her quizzically.

“Wha--” he started to say.

“Paula says you like me,” she blurted out at the same time. She laughed nervously. “She said you asked me over here as a ruse to see me, and that your cabinets probably aren’t even hexed, and isn’t that hilarious? That Paula. So funny.”

Greg opened his mouth, took a breath, licked his lips. Did he step just a tiny bit closer to her, or was that Rebecca’s imagination? She laughed again.

After a long moment, Greg sighed. “I do like you.”

Rebecca blinked. “Come again?”

He coughed. “I mean, my cabinets _don’t_ shut. See?” He reached out to press against the door to the armoire, and as he did, his hand brushed her arm. She shivered. When she turned her head to the side, though, she could see the cabinet door groaning open after he let go, a tiny green fly buzzing out.

She tilted her head up to look at him. “They don’t.”

“But, um. I probably could have brewed a quick sticking potion. Or asked the caretaker to have a look at it.” 

“But you didn’t.” Her breathing was shallow, and she felt a thrumming in her veins. She and Greg had been coming up with increasingly flimsy reasons to spend time together all term. Had she willed herself into suppressing her feelings so effectively that she’d failed to notice?  

Greg swallowed, then shuffled just a little bit closer-- slowly, as if daring her to back away. She didn’t.

“No,” he said. “I didn’t.” He was looking down at her with dark eyes, his face only inches away from hers, and he reached out, almost like it was unintentional, to trail his fingertips along the curve of her elbow. 

Rebecca tilted her head up, her eyelids heavy. “Whatever happened to getting to know each other as adults?”

His answering laugh was quiet and low in the back of his throat, and it gave her a little thrill. “What the hell do you think we’ve been doing the past few months?”

“Yeah, okay, fair point.”

He leaned down, his lips almost brushing hers, but not quite. She reveled in the warmth of him so close to her. “I know you. I like you. Do you still like me?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then,” he said, and he pressed his lips against hers, soft and slow. She deepened the kiss, wrapping her arms around his neck, and he walked her back against the store room armoire. The door shut easily beneath their combined weight. 

Before her mind went blissfully blank, she marveled at the fact that just a few months ago, she and Greg had been near strangers, and ten years ago, they’d been worse than that, and now here they were, all smiles and and sighs and heated kisses in the back of his classroom.

But time had a way of working things out. It was just like magic.


End file.
